Come What May & Love It!

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We have been so overwhelmed and full of gratitude by the love, excitement, encouragement and support we have been receiving from so many since sharing our exciting news to grow our family through adoption!

We feel so fortunate to be surrounded by so many wonderful family and friends.

With all of the amazing support we have been receiving, we’ve also been getting a lot of questions as to what our next step is going to be in this process.

Back story:

Not long before sharing our news, I visited with a cousin that were in our shoes of infertility and were able to adopt 3 beautiful kids. Their first son, Toa, they adopted from Samoa (after living there for some time) and the other two, AJ and Elizabeth they were able to adopt privately.

After hearing about their success and experience with private adoption, and also after doing some research on our own, we have decided that we are going to adopt privately.

One of the reasons we had decided not to continue with Infertility Treatments was because of the high cost. This was one factor to our ongoing stress with infertility we were so thankful to eliminate from our marriage when moving on past infertility treatments.

During our research of different types of adoptions, along with visiting with my cousin, we found that the most affordable ways of adopting are foster-to-adopt and private adoptions.

Through private adoption, we will find our baby on our own and with the help of word of mouth. We will continue to share our story and ask everyone to please get the word out that we are looking to adopt a baby.

Through this experience, we hope to find the right expectant Mother, who wants to create a relationship with us through an open adoption.

We understand that the process may be quicker and smoother through an agency and I am not against using an agency to adopt a baby, however, in our current situation we are wanting to take the affordable route by adopting privately.

So, what’s next for us?:

Find our baby.

We are asking for everyone to please share our story, and spread the news that we are looking to adopt a baby!

I hope that I can use this blog as a platform to share the news as well as other Social Media outlets.

Please follow my instagram account @hannahjane2a1 where I will regularly share updates, as well as like, follow and SHARE our new facebook page:

You have no idea how hard it was for me to keep our grand news (ADOPTION!!!!) to myself! I think it was because this was the first time in a long time that we had good news to share and I was just dying to tell everyone!!

We wanted to tell our families before we shared the news, and now that they are fully in the loop, you can bet that I’m going to be talking about this a lot!!!

I want to share how we came to the decision to adopt, and how thankful we are to start this new adventure!

As I said from my last post, Hailame and I were brought to a crossroads in our Baby Making Journey, and had to decide how we wanted to move forward.

During our follow up appointment, we were told that we would have to do 3 more months of trial medications and tests to see if we could get our bodies to a place where they can conceive, however this time, the amount of money that we would have to put out would triple and it wasn’t a guarantee the medications would work.

This just about killed us. We were so hopeful that we would move forward with the IVF treatments and instead we found out we were no where near where we needed to be.

After the appointment, Hailame drove me back to work, and the drive back was silent. We didn’t even know what to say.

We were frustrated, heart broken, feeling bad, confused, and on the verge of tears (well at least I was).

The last half of my day just dragged. I couldn’t get my mind off of what we just went through.

Where were we going to get the money, how much longer would we have to do this trial run to get where we need to be, why can’t this be our time to start our family?

The next day, while at work, I kept thinking about adoption. I’m not sure why, because I had forced the idea to the back of my mind for so long because I was so determined that we were going to be able to have a baby on our own.

But the more I thought about it and started reading about it, the more it made sense that this was supposed to be the way we build our family.

I called Hailame during work and said, “Honey, I know this is NOT the conversation to have while at work or on the phone, but I need to say it now, I think we need to adopt a baby!”

The second I said it out loud I had peace just rush through me. This had been the answer to our endless prayers. God was opening a door for us, and I’m pretty sure the door had been there for a while, I just refused to look at it.

We both had our own personal confirmations that this was right road for us to be on, and it was going to be great adventure!

I never thought in a million years that we would ever adopt a baby, but for the first time in a long time, we can talk about our future children, without heart ache (or me breaking down uncontrollably) because I know this is exactly what we were meant to do, and we are blessed to be in this situation.

So here we are! Ready and so excited to move forward!

I hope you will join us in this adventure! We are stepping into new territory and we are open to all the advice, support and prayers we can get!

We are excited to announce that we will be starting a GRAND adventure!

Ironically, it has nothing to do with the Grand Canyon, but everything sounds so much more exciting when you say that it’s GRAND!

But we do love the Grand Canyon, and go there often!

Anyway… scroll down to see our exciting news!

We have decided to build our family through the beautiful opportunity of adoption!

Once we decided that this is the answer to our prayers, everything has felt right. This is the first time in a long time that I am fully at peace, and confident that this is the road for Hailame and me.

This is unique experience that we are eager to be apart of, and I have already started to pray for the amazing birth Mother and sweet Miracle Baby that we are excited to find and make part of our family!

On Mother’s Day, I received an anonymous gift. In side was a card letting me know someone was thinking of me this Mother’s Day, a beautiful necklace and a quote that was just what I needed at that very moment, and still use it to draw strength and encouragement from:

“Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations”

Growing up, I’ve always loved mountains. Being raised in Salt Lake City, I was surrounded by beautiful mountains. My parents would regularly take our family camping in the mountains, and I grew up loving Yellow Stone, the Tetons, and other beautiful sites.

My Family- Mirror Lake- July 2014

But it wasn’t until college, while working at Jacob Lake Inn, that I really came to appreciate and love mountains. For 5 fall seasons in a row, I spent 6 days a week working as a waitress and 1 day a week hiking the trails of Zion National Park, Snow Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Northern Arizona and the Kaibab National Forest. During my 2 hour work breaks, I would go trail running in the forest close to the Inn, and I hiked Rim2Rim of the Grand Canyon 3 times.

Grand Canyon’s Cape Royal- May 2013

It was in these moments that I pushed myself to do hard things. These experiences gave me that drive to challenge myself and try new things and see beautiful, amazing and breath taking views and destinations (cue Hannah Montana’s “It’s the Climb” 🙂

I’m continuing to learn that life in its self is a mountain that we are climbing everyday, or maybe more like we are climbing multiple mountains with different experiences we have…. marriage, careers, family, goals, daily tasks, etc.

Not every experience is a trial, and each experience brings learning and new outlooks on life no matter how simple or drastic it is. With each trail in life, I’ve learned that my attitude and outlook has a lot of control in how much I take away from my experience and what I learn.

***BACK TO THE NECKLACE***

As you can see, that small act of kindness from whoever sent me the necklace and quote really helped me remember what I’m capable of.

I love this necklace, and it has helped mold my outlook on the kind of woman, wife, mother, and individual I want to be.

Colorado River- New Years Day 2018

Just because I’m not regularly plateauing Angel’s Landing, crossing the Colorado River while doing Rim2Rim or running through the Kaibab Forest doesn’t mean I’m not capable of conquering the mountains I have in front of me right now.

I can conquer every mountain I’m climbing right now.

I can take control of how I approach PCOS, and not allowing the symptoms to define who I am.

Hailame and I will be able to have a family of our own.

I am capable of disciplining myself to become healthier.

I will be a Mother… one day.

Why?

Because…

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations…

and my road of life is beautiful.

love, hannah jane

p.s. If the wonderful person who sent me this gift is reading this, thank you for thinking of me, it was and is just what I need.

***FYI: This post is more like a journal entry and doesn’t have a lot to do with anything, just talking about my average everyday life with my wonderful hubby 🙂

I am thankful for long weekends that don’t include obligatory functions, traveling, coming back to real life exhausted due to a busy weekend.

Hannah only portion of the long weekend:

I was lucky to have one of those weekends where I was able to really relax.

Hailame had to go up to Salt Lake City to attend a family wedding (oldest Tongan son traditions), and I didn’t want to take off work so I could attend another family function this coming weekend, so on Thursday night, Friday and Saturday it was just me at the house.

Thursday evening was a Girl Night. I went and got a much needed pedicure with one of my good friends, Tiffany. We had been talking about this for weeks, and I’m so glad we finally made it happen.. we even did a little karaoke while getting our toes painted and after we went and got snow cones and had some much needed girl talk!

Friday night I stayed in and watched Downton Abbey, started a 1,000 piece puzzle, and fell asleep on the couch. Bliss…

Saturday, I woke up around 8:00 am and cleaned the house! It was wonderful!

I was able to de-clutter, reorganize, vacuum, dust, scrub and do ALL of my laundry and not have one dirty clothing item anywhere (which was short lived once Hailame came home Saturday evening…)!

I took a giant load of unwanted items to Deseret Industries Thrift Store (and didn’t even go inside to buy more stuff!), I attempted to work on some unfinished sewing projects… but didn’t get too far since my sewing machine was acting ridiculous and wouldn’t let me thread it!.. moving on.

I was in such a cleaning groove, I even vacuumed my car, shampooed the seats, wiped down the whole interior, and blew all the leaves/dead cockroaches out of the car port–> super stressful, by the way, making sure they didn’t blow on top of me, or didn’t step on them!

I felt so accomplished, and I finished all these projects by 3:00 pm giving me time to make dinner (Chicken Cordon Bleu casserole with veggies!) and work on the puzzle some more and watch more of Downton Abbey before Hailame came home at 6:30 pm.

Hailame and Hannah portion of the weekend:

Saturday evening we went to our friends house, the Howell’s, to play cards, watch a basketball game and eat s’mores, cookies (Crumbl Cookie has come to St. George) and ice cream. At 10:00 pm the Hailame and Blaine decided to watch “The Sixth Sense” which I promptly slept through, and after the movie Hailame and Blaine played cards for another hour while Kelsey and I were knocked out on the couch. We didn’t go home until 1:30 am.

Sunday after church, we went back to the Howells for dinner and games (staying pretty late knowing we didn’t have to go to work on Monday! Wahoo!)

Monday was a good day, an extremely good day.

We slept in, no I slept in and Hailame went fishing with Blaine and Hunter (Blaine’s son). I woke up around 9:00 am and made some breakfast and turned on Gilmore Girls and worked on the puzzle until Hailame got home.

We lounged around the house for a bit then went swimming. The pool was cold and then cloudy weather didn’t help, but it was our first swim of the season and it was wonderful! After swimming, we came home and took a nap for a couple of hours before eating some dinner and playing pickleball with some of our friends, the Gorringes, where Hailame broke one of our paddles during the first game. 🙂

This was a much needed weekend, and I wished it wouldn’t end. Spending all day with Hailame is my favorite thing to do, even if we are just lounging around the house.

This last weekend I went up to Pleasant Grove to have a HSG done… or in normal people words, have my Fallopian Tubes cleaned out with dye.

During this 3 month period of getting “baby healthy,” our doctor is wanting to eliminate different reasons as to why we haven’t been able to get pregnant on our own, so in addition to getting my body to cycle regularly, they also wanted to make sure my Fallopian tubes are clear and don’t have any blockage.

I had heard of this procedure before, my sister and two of my best friends had gone through this and they mentioned that it was similar to having uncomfortable cramps (which I’ve hardly had my whole life because I’ve always struggled in the regular cycles department anyway) but also that it was a pretty quick process.

***Side Story: The year I got diagnosed with PCOS, my PA was wanting to make sure I didn’t have Endometriosis or any Cancerous cysts as well, so they completed a vaginal biopsy (TMI? Sorry.), and it was the worst pain I had ever experienced.

From the start, it didn’t look like it was going to be so bad, my PA just mentioned that were going to do a quick swipe down there, but if I didn’t hold still in the right position they would have to do it again.

Well, not ever really experiencing major cramps, I got a RUDE awakening of the worst cramps I had ever received. It felt like someone was taking my lower abdominal area and wringing it out similar to wringing out a wet cloth. IT WAS MISERABLE, and they had to do it twice because apparently I was moving too much… MY BAD!

And to add to everything, I wasn’t only crying over the pain, all my emotions with infertility that I had kept bottled up, while trying to remain strong, came flowing out like a dam had just broken and there was no holding back after going through that biopsy.

So when approaching the Fallopian tube cleaning… I figured nothing could compare to the pain of that biopsy (except perhaps child birth 🙂 ).

My Mother, on the way to the procedure, kindly reminded me that when she delivered me, I was 10 pounds and she did it without any drugs, so I would probably be okay with this 5 minute procedure… thanks Mom….

Thankfully the nice front desk worker encouraged me to take some Ibuprofen about a half hour before the procedure to help with the pain (Bless you for your kindness!)

Upon arrival I had to complete a pregnancy test, and then I was prepared for the procedure. I was so happy and thankful to have a Nurse Practitioner who was so kind and thoroughly walked me through every step of what would happen before starting.

From the start, I tried to focus on breathing and finding something in the room to distract me from the large ultrasound camera covering me and all the things that were going to be put inside me to complete this procedure.

The first round they were able to have one of my Fallopian tubes clear very quickly, and it wasn’t painful at all. I could feel the pressure of the cramp, but it wasn’t anywhere close to how I imagined it would be. They weren’t able to get a clear picture of my second tube, and were concerned it might be blocked.

Right when they started talking about the other tube not functioning and they wanted to test it a couple more times, I don’t know why it triggered my emotions so deeply, but I just fell apart.

I think part of this came from bottling up a lot of emotions, as I always try to, after having a couple of my best friends from college deliver beautiful babies in the last month, and 2 more getting ready to deliver in the next few months.

I am so happy for these best friends, they are and will make wonderful Mothers and I’m happy for their triumphs because a couple of them went through the same trials I’m going through now. But as thrilled I am for them, I am still human and it is hard, as I deeply long to be in the place where they are now.

It’s a hard place to be where I want to see and talk about their new beautiful babies with them and maintain a positive attitude from myself and not allow myself to compare myself to them, be envious or bitter, because I don’t want to allow that kind of poison in my life.

I’m sure I’m not the first emotional patient these nurses have seen, but it still makes me feel bad, because they weren’t doing anything to hurt me, my emotions just get the better of me.

They tried two more times to clear the second tube, with no success. They mentioned that the tube may have closed up from stress of the procedure and it may not really be blocked, or it could be blocked and Dr. Foulk will decide what to do next.

I’m thankful to have a Mother that made time to take me, since Hailame couldn’t get work off, and then allowed me to cry majority of the way home. She also brightened my day by taking me to a Thrift Store… my shopping therapy, just ten times more affordable than the Mall. 🙂

Although the result for this procedure weren’t fully what I was hoping for, I am continually thankful for answers and knowledge that will help me get closer to getting in the right direction to have our baby one day!